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GLOUCESTERSHIRE ROUNDHEADS by Russell Howes

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GLOUCESTERSHIRE ROUNDHEADS by Russell Howes Reprinted from Gloucestershire History N0. 7 (1993) pages 4-7 GLOUCESTERSHIRE ROUNDHEADS By Russell Howes The people of Gloucestershire were divided in the civil war of themselves at vast expense. However the story goes that Cromwell the seventeenth century, some being for the king, and some for and Ireton visited Chavenage, and persuaded Stephens to support parliament. Each county and borough returned two members to the setting up of a court to try the king. Charles I was executed in parliament, and in Gloucestershire. as in some other counties, one 1649, though Stephens was not a member of the court. The story was a royalist. and the other a parliamentarian. The parliamentarian continues that, soon after the execution, Stephens died, and his was Nathaniel Stephens, who had houses at Eastington and shade departed in a carriage driven by a headless man in royal Chavenage. At the first election of 1640 he was suddenly set up livery. However he was alive in 1660, when he was named a commissioner for the militia, and a tablet in Eastington church i '. indicates that he died that year. Q :13. Two cousins of Nathaniel were in parliament. Edward Q '.\l-' Stephens of Little Sodbury was member for Tewkesbury. He opposed the trial of Charles I, and published A Letter ofAdvice to J ‘II Qag] 5 N ' " “" g Sir Thomas Faitfax, imploring him to save the nation from 7 #431 | 14,.-. murdering the king. He helped to bring about the restoration in 7-»-I" __ 7 . T‘ “'3 .21 _*- \-w-Q " -_ *5-‘ 1- 1660; as ‘old Mr. Stevens’ he said in parliament that the nation 7 _,-ii‘; F .v-1.... would never be happy until sun, moon and stars were set in their proper orbits, that is, king, lords and commons (2). John Stephens, Edward’s brother, suffered damage in the war, when royalists under Sir Jacob Astley burnt his house at Over Lypiatt. John Stephens became second member of parliament for Tewkesbury. He sat on the committee for compounding, which exacted fines from royalists; the committee awarded him lands belonging to Astley to compensate for his loss at Lypiatt. 1 '-~¢uun|I!r' " " The city of Gloucester, like the county, had two members of Charenage. the home ofNathaniel Stephens. parliament of different views. Thomas Pury - the one who con- cerns us here - an alderman of the city, was a zealous parlia- as a candidate, to the disgust ofJohn Dutton. elected as a royal- mentarian and puritan. He wore his hat in church, as quakers did ist member, who declared that he would never more trust any man later. He supported the abolition of deans and chapters, claiming who wore his hair shorter than his ears (1). Unsuccessful at his first that the dean and chapter of Gloucester owned one third of the attempt, Stephens was elected later in 1640, and sat as a member houses in the city, but did not relieve the poor, or amend highways, of the long parliament. During the siege of Gloucester he was and actually hindered preaching (3). He gave evidence against instructed by the house of commons to write to the citizens, urging William Laud at the archbishop’s trial. them to hold out. Pury’s son, also Thomas, exhibited the more useful side of At the end of the war parliamentarians disagreed about how puritanism. Gloucester city council had requested parliament for to deal with the king. Nathaniel Stephens was for making terms: the chapter house to be a public library (4). It was granted; and the he implored parliament to make yet another application to the king, younger Pury undertook its fitting out, and gave money and books. or it would be said that parliament kept up the army to maintain lt is now the cathedral library. After deans and chapters were 4 abolished he leased the deanery (now Church House) and also ‘the Denis Wise, mayor during the year of the siege, was a captain old school house‘, which contained what is now called the par- of the city trained band. He had charge of a store of arms at the liament room. After the restoration the elder Pury moved to Tolsey; a list of I644 recorded its contents as including 40 halberds London, and resigned as alderman before the Corporation Act and I20 of musket furniture and barrels without stocks. During the purged town councils. The younger Pury retired to Taynton, where protectorate, when Cromwell granted the cathedral to the mayor his tomb may be seen. and burgesses, Denis Wise was appointed treasurer of the repair fund (9). It is not surprising that this active parliamentarian was removed from the council by the corporation act in I662. Tobias Jordan, another member of the city council, was one of those citizens with ‘lean, pale, sharp and bad visages’ (as de- scribed by the historian Clarendon), who brought the defiant answer to the king’s summons before the siege. He was a book- seller and stationer, and supplied the soldiers with the paper they needed for cartridges (I0). He was mayor during the restoration year, and his name is on the maces and sword of state still in use. He was removed from the council by the Corporation Act, but not until 1663. THE STAND OF SOME COUNTY GENTLEMEN Country gentlemen were not all on the side of the king, as the Stephens family shows. William Guise of Elmore belonged to one of the oldest county families. He was accused before the committee of Gloucester of looking sorrowful at the breaking up of the siege of Gloucester, and then going into the enemy’s quarters. He said that he had armed his tenants for parliament, and sent supplies and £40 to Sir William Waller. Captain William Matthews and Captain Richard West took plate and valuables worth £200, and carried him prisoner to Gloucester, but Massey released him. Because his provisions were exhausted he went to his wife's brother in Monmouthshire. There he fell downstairs. He went to Bath to be cured of his lameness. and the king demanded a loan from him. He visited Oxford, the king’s headquarters, only to get the demand removed. The committee of Gloucester declared him a delinquent Colonel Massey in 164 7. by one vote! His son Christopher pleaded for him before the lords and commons, and got him acquitted (I I). The man who embodied Gloucester’s resistance to the king was Colonel Edward Massey. The Earl of Stamford appointed him EXPERIENCES OF HUMBLER FOLK govemor ofGloucester in I642. Massey defied the king in the siege The common people have not left many records. Ralph Wallis of I643. The accounts kept by Massey‘s treasurer at war, Captain carried warrants to sequester the estates of malignants. that is Thomas Blaney, reveal how the garrison had to make its own royalists. On one such mission he was captured; his wife Dorothy ammunition; there were payments to the makers of bullets and petitioned Massey. saying that he had been betrayed to the Sudeley powder, and for liquor from pigeon houses for making scouts, and been taken first to Sudeley castle, and thence to Oxford; saltpetre (5). The story that the royalists shot an arrow into the city, she asked that he might be exchanged for a prisoner held at bearing a message urging surrender, and that the defenders shot Gloucester (I2). Thomas Blaney paid her money while her it back with a defiant reply, receives confirmation from BIaney’s husband was a prisoner. After the war a Ralph Wallis was ap- accounts; he paid for a great cross bow, for arrow heads, and for pointed to keep an English school in Trinity Church Gloucester. the bolt shot in the siege. The house of commons showed its Following the restoration an anonymous pamphlet, More News gratitude for Massey’s defence of Gloucester by voting him a from Rome, criticised the Church of England, calling the former reward of £1000 (6). Massey’s most notable victory was at Bishop Goodman a papist, denouncing pluralists, and declaring Redmarley, when he defeated Nicholas Mynne, taking 300 that the singing men of the cathedral were drunken and incom- prisoners for the loss of only three men (7). petent. The author was discovered by Giles Webley the postmaster There were two regiments in Gloucester’s garrison, the to be Ralph Wallis ; he had opened a letter addressed to Wallis. Govemor’s regiment, and the Earl of Stamford’s regiment. It is He was subsequently described as a cobbler of scurrilous wit. remarkable that the officers of the Governor’s regiment included A few individual soldiers have left a record. John Barrett, Alderman Thomas Pury, probably two more aldermen, and one corporal, was in a party that went to Painswick; his company was or two members of the city council, besides Thomas Pury junior. put to flight, and he was left for dead; the enemy stripped him stark There was also a regiment raised by the city, commanded by naked to the very skin. This was no figure of speech, for he went Colonel Thomas Stephens, son of Edward. He claimed not to be on to say that he afterwards lay ‘bedrid under the Cyrurgions under Massey‘s authority, and caused him much vexation. Thomas hands’; he was now able to rise, but could not-for want of clothes. Stephens attempted to relieve Rowdon House near Chippenham, Massey ordered him to be paid £l (I3). which was besieged by the royalists, and then was besieged A brief life of John Freind was written by his brother Nathaniel.
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